Page 6 of Twisted Steel

“What?I’m gay, not blind.”

I grab the black card from the edge of the ambulance and shove it into my pocket instead of throwing it away, and Milo sees.

I point at him.“Not one word.”

He raises both hands.“Wouldn’t dream of it.”But his mouth twitches.

I climb into the ambulance and close the doors harder than necessary.

Steel is violence made flesh.I know it in my bones.Men like him don’t save people.They break them.They make calls like tonight happen.They bring blood into parking lots and hospitals and lives that were doing just fine without them.

I save lives.He takes them.There’s no universe where a man like that belongs anywhere near me.But as we pull away from County, my fingers brush the card in my pocket.And I know, with a cold certainty I can’t shake, that tonight wasn’t the last time I’ll see Steel.It was only the first time he got between me and death.

Chapter Two

The Medic And The Monster

Steel

Harper Quinn shouldn’t exist in my world.

That’s my first thought when I watch her ambulance vanish from County’s ambulance bay, red lights cutting through the night like warning flares.

My second thought is worse.

I want to follow her.Not because she is a loose end.Not because she saw faces or heard gunfire or got too close to club blood spilled on dirty asphalt.Because the second my hand closed around her arm and I dragged her out of a bullet’s path, something in me locked.

Not soft, I don’t have soft in me.Not sweet either, but something meaner.Older.Instinct.

‘Mine to keep alive.’The thought pisses me off enough that I turn and punch the brick wall beside the ambulance bay.Pain blooms across my knuckles, skin splits, and blood wells.

Good, pain makes sense.A woman with sharp eyes and a sharper mouth doesn’t.

“Problem?”

I turn my head.Savage stands a few feet away, half in shadow, cut hanging open, blood dried across the side of his neck.Not his.Probably Rex’s.Maybe Jax’s.Tonight went sideways fast, which means tomorrow will be uglier.